It's time for the world's public health officials to pay very close
attention to the new bird flu outbreak in China first detected in March.
To put it bluntly, there are now some seriously dangerous developments
occurring around the new disease outbreak in China that infectious
disease specialists and international public health specialists need to
track closely.

Let's start with three new developments reported on earlier this week
by Jason Koebler, U.S. News & World Report's science and technology
correspondent: the first reported case of the new bird flu strain
outside China; the fact that any potential vaccine tests in animals (not
humans) may be up to six weeks out; and, more ominously, that Chinese
officials suspect that there may be cases of human to human transmission
in the 100-plus reported cases (which include 22 deaths). [Bird-Flu Update: Possible Cases of Human-to-Human Transmission Investigated]

"The situation remains complex and difficult and evolving. When we look
at influenza viruses, this is an unusually dangerous virus for humans,"
Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization's assistant
director-general for health security, said Wednesday at a briefing.

Chinese officials —and public health officials around the world —had
hoped that this potentially virulent and deadly bird flu strain (H7N9)
could be contained inside China and that it would not progress or
mutate to the point where humans could transmit the strain to other
humans. But, of the patients analyzed so far, half appear to have had no
contact whatsoever with poultry.

Now, with the first reported case outside China appearing in Taiwan
this week — a 53-year-old male, Taiwanese citizen who worked in the
Jiangsu Province in China, developed symptoms three days after returning
to Taiwan, according to Taiwan's Central Epidemic Command Center —and
the fact that Chinese officials are publicly saying that at least some
of the existing cases may have involved human-to-human transmission,
this new bird flu strain could spread —and fast. [New Bird Flu Virus: 6 Things You Should Know]